Bang.

I woke up at 4am because my tent was leaning sideways in the wind. I hadn't staked it out because I was on the side of an ATV trail and wanted to leave room, and there wasn't any storms predicted. I looked at my phone and it said: "03:48 Tuesday 13 June 2017 ; Strong wind gusts and locally heavy rain is expected in thunderstorms early this morning. ; An area of thunderstorms over the Grey - Bruce area is tracking east at about 90 km/h. Wind gusts of 80 km/h, 25 mm of rain and small hail are all possible within these thunderstorms. ". The roof of my tent was illuminated by far-off lightning, though the thunder sounded far away. It started raining, and since I didn't have my fly staked out I had to improvise. I had left one pannier about a foot from my tent with the reflective sides facing up and down the trail, so any passing ATVs might see it (no ATVs passed.) I pushed the pannier farther away and hitched my fly to it, which worked well. While I did so, I had my bike light held between my teeth, and several of the mosquitoes which were hanging out on my tent flew into my mouth. It rained a bit and then the storm passed.

I went back to bed as the frogs and birds started chirping, but then was awoken at 6:30am by a loud bang! I'm pretty sure this is the closest I've ever come to being struck by lightning. I checked the North American Lightning Detection Network and it looks like it was within 100m of where I was camping, although I can't find the precision of said database. (Although 343 m/s comapred to the flash & thunder timing in this video I took of a subsequent strike makes 100m seem reasonable.)

I stayed in my tent until 11am because the weather was alternating between torrential rain and no rain. I heard footsteps of a person jogging by and then stoping near my tent. "Anyone in there?", he asked of my tent. "Yeah", I responded. I stuck my head out and we chatted for a bit. He was a guy in his early 20s. He told me about all the waterfalls and cliffs I should see nearby. He also asked me how I carry my water (24oz bike bottle, 2x 1L Nalgene, 4L dromedary bag). He told me that recently his mom got him a 1 gallon water jug to take to work with him and that he is in love with it because, "It sucks when you're working hard all day and you've only got a 1 liter bottle, so you're jewin' your water all day." Sure does man. He jogged off and I packed up my tent in the rain and headed off.

About 5km down the trail an ATV pulled up behind me and it was the same guy! He told me he lived nearby and offered to let me come by and dry out all my stuff. He said he wasworried he hadn't offered me enough hospitality. I had already mentally committed to pedaling in the rain so I said no thanks and we parted ways.

It got sunny soon after and the remaining 45km of the rail trail was quite nice.